The Aftermath of a Tidal Wave

Yesterday I asked for God to Defend the Right, wherever He could find it. Today I must trust that He has done so.

As I reflect on the magnitude of Trump's victory, which victory I did not expect, I think that Patrick Caddell is really the one who got it right. I am sure we will hear from the smart, educated people that this election was all about sexism and racism. I suspect that voters for whom sex and race were the most important factors are why it was so close for Clinton, rather than why Trump won. My evidence is anecdotal, but I know many women for whom Trump's sexist treatment of women was the deciding factor. I know a Latina for whom it would be hard to divide between her opposition to Trump's way of speaking about women, and Trump's apparent opposition to what she thinks of as her race. For my mother, it was both: though as white as it is possible to be white, she was offended on behalf of recent immigrants, as well as offended as a woman. I do not mean to say they were wrong to vote as they did. I just mean to say that, insofar as they were concerned with these things, they were forces holding the election close rather than driving the Trump victory.

I think the reason Trump won was not a counter-reaction in favor of sexism or racism. I think it was what Caddell identified, which now that I reflect on it I realize I've been hearing from both sides of the aisle for a long time. I just didn't see the unity in the position until he pointed it out, and might not have believed in it if he hadn't backed it up with his research.

Let's hear it again.

What we learned in our in-depth research was as astonishing as it was unexpected. It became clear from this really deep public opinion inquiry that American politics has entered an historic paradigm. What is emerging in what had been assumed to be the static political system was about to be reconfigured in ways and that we still do not know fully. But one thing is certain: the old rules of politics are collapsing and a new edifice is emerging.

The conventional wisdom that America is absolutely divided into warring tribes is a tired falsehood. Overall, in the attitude structure of the American people, the elements of this new paradigm are commonly shared by upwards of 80 percent of the population – from the Occupy Wall Street movement on the left to the Tea Parties on the right. The political battleground is no longer over ideology but instead is all about insurgency....

In our research, the current level of alienation that now grips the American electorate is staggering and unprecedented.

Here are some of our latest results among likely voters from early October 2016:

1. The power of ordinary people to control our country is getting weaker every day, as political leaders on both sides, fight to protect their own power and privilege, at the expense of the nation’s well-being. We need to restore what we really believe in – real democracy by the people and real free-enterprise. AGREE = 87%; DISAGREE = 10%

2. The country is run by an alliance of incumbent politicians, media pundits, lobbyists and other powerful money interests for their own gain at the expense of the American people. AGREE = 87%; DISAGREE = 10%

4. Powerful interests from Wall Street banks to corporations, unions and political interest groups have used campaign and lobbying money to rig the system for them. They are looting the national treasury of billions of dollars at the expense of every man, woman and child. AGREE = 81%; DISAGREE = 13%

5. The U.S. has a two-track economy where most Americans struggle every day, where good jobs are hard to find, where huge corporations get all the rewards. We need fundamental changes to fix the inequity in our economic system. AGREE = 81%; DISAGREE = 15%

6. Political leaders are more interested in protecting their power and privilege than doing what is right for the American people. AGREE = 86%; DISAGREE = 11%

7. The two main political parties are too beholden to special and corporate interest to create any meaningful change. AGREE = 76%; DISAGREE = 19%

8. The real struggle for America is not between Democrats and Republicans but between mainstream American and the ruling political elites. AGREE = 67%; DISAGREE = 24%

I realize Mr. Hines objects to hearing the "conventional wisdom" described as a "falsehood," as if it were a lie. Say, rather, that it was simply false. Surely people did believe it. They taught each other to believe it, by reading and writing pieces analyzing the world in this way. All the wise and well-educated believed it, most likely. I believed it myself, until I heard something better.

This election is thus a historic moment. I don't know if I believe the man it has settled upon is at all the right man for the task ahead of him. Insofar as he takes this particular task seriously, however, we surely ought to help him. The systems of the elite do need to be broken up. The way in which the government has come to serve the elite and not the people is indeed a swamp that needs to be drained. The looting of America by the few needs to end, and the government ought again to serve the common good of the People.

If he instead turns to the exercise of bigotry as if he were some sort of monarch, or if he violates his oath to support and defend the Constitution, I will be steadfast in opposition to him. If he does what I think the American people have chosen him to do, I must have faith that it was the right I asked God to defend. It has a strong claim to be the right: whether the ruling class serves the common good or its own interests is the very criterion that Aristotle set as the test for the health of all forms of government.

Our government is not healthy. Our people are. This was a mass turnout election. We are always told that high turnout favors Democrats, but this year it favored the insurgent candidate. Trump out performed past Republican candidates among minority voters, too. The people are demanding this change, and it is the change that Aristotle -- though cautious of the effect of the mob will on democratic societies -- would likely endorse. America must be for the common good of its people again, and not just for the few and elite.

8 comments:

I don't have time for the thoughtful response your post invites, but a few quick reactions:

The systems of the elite do need to be broken up. The way in which the government has come to serve the elite and not the people is indeed a swamp that needs to be drained.

Government has always served (and mostly consisted of) the elite. The Founders were the elite - they were not common folk. And government does serve "the people" in many ways in which it did not previously. It's just that it singles out some people to be "served" (identity groups, women, etc)while ignoring/disparaging the interests of other people/groups (rural voters, working class men, whites). It's the government finger on the scale of justice that outrages me - justice, nowadays, is not supposed to be blind - she is urged to be "empathetic" (but only to 'worthy' groups and individuals).

The looting of America by the few needs to end, and the government ought again to serve the common good of the People.

What is the common good, and how many of agree upon what it consists of? I guess I see America as a nation of competing interests to be balanced fairly. Give govt. too much power and it unfairly bestows largesse on some groups while punishing/ignoring others.

Our government is not healthy. Our people are.

Agreed as to the first, but not the second. When I look around, I see much that is sick in our culture. It doesn't seem at all healthy to me. Government *is* people, and to the extent that it gives individuals power, it tends to magnify both their flaws and virtues (character determines which are exercised and which suppressed). I can't see the world through a simple, binary lens in which this institution is "good" and that, "bad". I continue to see human nature as very much a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.

This was a mass turnout election. We are always told that high turnout favors Democrats, but this year it favored the insurgent candidate.

That could be very good, or very bad. Like you, I'm encouraged that "the People" (ones the media and this administration and Hillary herself think of as "deplorable") still believed enough in the system to vote. But I reject simple rules like, "high turnout favors Dems" because it matters *who* turns out. Likewise, I reject "govt. unequivocally bad, people unequivocally good" because parts of government do work well and parts of culture are healthy. But much of government and our culture are dysfunctional and deeply perverse.

I do find it amusing that Trump got around 30% of Hispanic men, 25% of Hispanic women, and 50+ % (too lazy to look it up) of white women.

We have a longstanding dispute, I think, on the subject of rule by elites versus a more democratic approach. Aristotle would have liked rule by a genuine elite, by which he would have meant a group distinguished by special virtue. These virtues are capacities for excellence, which very capacities make the elite individuals especially fit to exercise authority.

There is thus a kind of equivocation between "elite" as it is being used in this discussion, and the same word as you (and Aristotle) would like to use it. Here it just means people from a certain class, who attended certain schools, who know certain people, who are possessed of certain monies or attachment to others who possess such monies.

Even Aristotle, who favored aristocratic rule, nevertheless judged its health or lack thereof by the principle I cite. An aristocracy can descend into an oligarchy if it simply becomes a way of using power to favor the interests of the ruling class. That's all that is meant by the "common good" test -- as objectively as possible, does it seem that power is being exercised for the good of the whole polity, or to direct benefits to the ruling class?

Likewise, note that I am not using "good" and "bad" (nor "evil"), but "healthy" and "unhealthy." The intention is to talk with an eye towards a medical metaphor. Evil must be opposed, but an unhealthy practice might be trained towards health.

Bernie Sanders -- whatever you may think of him in general -- gave a good talk today in which he acknowledged some commonalities between his campaign and Trump's. Insofar as Trump is serious about working on those common issues, Bernie said, he would work with him. Insofar as instead he drifts into sexism or racism or the like, he would be opposed.

Those principles are similar to the ones I was articulating in this post, somewhat earlier in the day. I want to set parameters for cooperation, according to a notion of what is good for the polity -- a common good, not a good for my class (insofar as I have a class), or any particular class. I also want to set limits to that cooperation in moral terms.

Have you read Hillbilly Elegy? If you haven't, I highly recommend it. It is one of the best books I've read in decades and it touches on many of the topics over which we don't see eye to eye. It's written by guy who was a Marine. If you do read it, you'll see what I mean by "unhealthy" - where I tend to object to some of your observations is where they make blanket categorizations (the people are healthy, government is unhealthy) that are contradicted by what I see around me every day.

Our government today *doesn't* merely serve the interests of the ruling class. To an extend unprecedented in history, it redistributes wealth in an attempt to alleviate income inequality. Doing so may perhaps aid them at election time, but it seems wrong to maintain government only serves the ruling class or elites when it manifestly takes money from the wealthy and well off and gives it to the poor (rather than, say taking money from the well off to build public infrastructure programs, roads, bridges that benefit everyone).

Often, when I refer to aspects of our culture as 'unhealthy' (my sense that certain behaviors make it very hard to prosper and are actively harmful to children and stable families), you interpret this as my saying people who behave that way are evil. I think this is where we start talking past each other (not laying that at your feet, as I'm an active participant :).

I think one can abhor/oppose sin while loving (or at least not blaming or feeling superior to) the sinner. So I think it's good to be able to say, for instance, that stable families are better for kids than broken ones. Doesn't mean I hate anyone who is divorced or has children out of wedlock.

But I don't see how anyone can say our people are healthy when we have illegitimacy rates north of 70% in many sectors of the population, rampant drug use, etc. A world where parents can't be bothered to feed their kids before sending them to school, but have money for cell phones and other things that are luxuries, not necessities. These are big problems, and not ones any government can solve.

That said, I accept the diagnosis that the culture among the poor -- and not just the rural poor -- has become weakened and sickened in the ways you and he describe. But what has the elite done, except worsen this illness? Bad medicine is worse than none, and even too much of a good medicine is poison.

To take illegitimacy, your example, surely we have to admit that it has become popular because it has become economically sustainable via systems of welfare. Oh, it is impoverishing, to be sure: but nevertheless it is supported, paid for in cash month-by-month for the one who takes the illegitimate child. You know as well as anyone that humans regularly err in favor of selecting short-term goods at the cost of far more important long-term ones. Marriage would be better, but it is far harder, and its economic gains are realized in the long term rather than by immediate cash payments.

When National Review treated the same question, they talked about how hunger programs result in people buying tons of soda pop -- which they then sell back at about half its actual cost -- which cash they then use to buy drugs or booze or cigarettes, plus only enough very cheap and unhealthy food made up mostly of carbohydrates. The result of these government programs is ill-health and obesity, combined with substance abuse.

And yet these welfare systems, which end up poisoning communities, are the answer given by the governing class to economic ills like globalization. No problem if people can't work -- we'll have a universal basic income! No problem if the jobs go to countries where laborers are made sick or blind by exposure to chemicals or industrial conditions -- the American worker can be provided for from the public teat. The family may break up, and that may leave the elderly alone and despairing at the end of their lives -- but we'll provide social workers to medicate them.

These are palliatives to the harms caused by these social and economic changes, which in turn were caused or exacerbated by earlier palliatives. Just as exercise is better than drugs for your long-term health, marriage is better than welfare, and even the kind of hunger Americans knew in the 1930s is better than crippling obesity and drug problems. Yet they are all harder, too.

Perhaps you agree if I say that, left to nature, people tend to health. Even animals do -- left alone, they feed and exercise and flourish for a while. But you can ruin any animal by providing it with easily accessible calories that require no work to obtain.

I think it is fair to say that the class in charge of the economy and government elected to impoverish Americans of work by shifting that work out of the country -- or flooding the American market with cheap labor through unrestricted immigration. They then palliated the workless with these ruinous "medicines." Remove the poisons, and it may be that health will return naturally enough for most people.

No problem if people can't work -- we'll have a universal basic income! No problem if the jobs go to countries where laborers are made sick or blind by exposure to chemicals or industrial conditions -- the American worker can be provided for from the public teat. The family may break up, and that may leave the elderly alone and despairing at the end of their lives -- but we'll provide social workers to medicate them.

If you knew all of that, I wonder why you still supported Demoncrats like Hillary back in 2008. Did you refuse to accept that Hillary were Alinsky disciples merely because you looked down on Alinsky and Leftists as clowns, not worthy of your attention? After all, they weren't warriors, so you couldn't treat them as equals. But even a poisoner or assassin can kill a warrior, including peasants using crossbows to kill knights that have trained for decades of nobility.

I suppose that doesn't matter right now.

I had wondered when the rest of this country would wake up to America's slide into hell. Trum's election is perhaps the answer, plus the polls from C. CW2 will need 100 WACOs to light up though. That's still on schedule. America might be "waking up" but they haven't woken up to that yet, some people online are still telling me armed conflict is a dream.

I really hope you'll read the book eventually. I thought of you (and many debates we've had over the years) so many times when reading it. There's so much that's thought provoking in the book - especially his recounting of family culture *with* jobs and *with* a very solid income. Joblessness wasn't the reason for the dysfunction he grew up with, and that's a critical insight from the book.

That's not to say that joblessness isn't a big problem, but it's not all of the problem.

I agree the solutions posed by the elite haven't helped (and have hurt). But I don't agree - or at least not wholly - that the elites caused the problems in the first place. As you say, they haven't helped. I tend to believe they can't help a lot of this, but controlling immigration *would* help the job market at least somewhat.

These are palliatives to the harms caused by these social and economic changes, which in turn were caused or exacerbated by earlier palliatives. Just as exercise is better than drugs for your long-term health, marriage is better than welfare, and even the kind of hunger Americans knew in the 1930s is better than crippling obesity and drug problems. Yet they are all harder, too.

Hard, but perhaps necessary? That's what I think.

Perhaps you agree if I say that, left to nature, people tend to health. Even animals do -- left alone, they feed and exercise and flourish for a while. But you can ruin any animal by providing it with easily accessible calories that require no work to obtain.